


Period.

by nohomostylinson



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Essays, Gen, Randomness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-03 03:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nohomostylinson/pseuds/nohomostylinson
Summary: An ongoing collection of social issue essays written when I'm particularly emotional. Trigger warnings, if applicable, at the beginning of each chapter.





	1. Beauty.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: none. Not edited.

As a woman, I have been taught indirectly to not believe that I am beautiful. This was drilled into my head even as a young child, and maybe at first my imagination ran wild enough that I made up reasons as to why this could be a legitimate fact, but as I grew up there were certainly things for me to see that proved this. If a woman sees herself as beautiful, she is immediately labeled as conceded or narcissistic, when in reality, it is her finally accepting and seeing herself for what she truly is.

As a teenager, I was so engrossed in this idea that I didn’t realize it was taking over my thoughts. In middle school especially I found myself changing the way I saw myself so that I wouldn’t be thrown in the category of girl who loved herself–I saw that as a bad thing, a horrid thing. I moved schools before my seventh grade year with this idea in my head. I didn’t realize until it was too late that I had sunk into some form of unhappiness. But, in a way, I let this sink into how I spoke to people. I thought it made me normal, I thought that I had finally found things about myself to hate enough to blend in with what I knew to be the ideal girl.

If I was ever spoken to by a guy, my insecurities would often be brought into conversation. They’d tell me the opposite of what I thought about myself, that I was pretty and that I was special. They’d tell me not to think these things about myself. They asked me why, and I didn’t have any answers for them. I didn’t have answers because there wasn’t anything about myself that I actually did hate, but I still disliked myself. 

I didn’t know this was forming into an actual problem until my eighth-grade year. It was then that I realized that young girls shouldn’t be forced under this ideal that they can’t think themselves pretty, and so I worked to force my own opinion of myself to change. The only problem was, it wouldn’t. I had spent so much time fake-hating myself that it turned into actual self-hatred. This time around, I realized what it was really like to look in a mirror and genuinely not like what you see.

When I was in seventh grade, I didn’t know the level at which I was doing things to myself. I thought that I wasn’t supposed to think I was pretty and changed accordingly, but I shared this willingly. When someone told me they thought I was pretty, I denied it quickly because that’s what I thought I should do.

In eighth grade it was different. Now that I held an actual dislike for myself it was hard to talk about, so when anyone complimented me, I changed the subject. I made excuses why whatever they said couldn’t possibly be true, I dragged myself into the depths of self-loathing. I didn’t let anyone see it, though, because of what had happened in seventh grade. I now had built up a disgust for openly talking about my issues.

I’d help my friends through the similar things they were going through, but at the back of my mind, I’d wonder if they really thought the things they said about themselves. I’d think maybe they were in the same situation I had been in the year before. But if they ever asked about my issues, I’d shut them down. It was as if I was ignoring the glaring issue I had–myself.

At the end of that year, I had a pile of thoughts in my head. The main ones touched on one large thing: Why, if so many people could tell me I was beautiful, couldn’t I believe I actually was? Throughout eighth grade, all I could think and dream about was high school. Big things were going to happen for me, and then maybe I could be happy with myself.

That summer, nothing progressive happened. I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe life would keep going in the horrible direction it seemed to have been leading to the previous year. But somehow, as soon as school started my insecurities fell away as quickly as things fell into place. I landed a lead in the fall play and became close friends with upperclassmen, which allowed me a path away from the drama in my grade. 

I stayed friends with a small group of people from my grade, but other than them, I was transported to another world. With school, then rehearsals every day, then homework as soon as I got home, it seemed like there was almost no time for me to hate myself anymore.

Of course, there were times where I slipped back into it. Someone would give me a perfect lead-in for a self-deprecating comment and, of course, I would take it. Or maybe others would be discussing their opinions of themselves and I’d have the urge to throw something in. But those moments became less serious and more for laughter. I found myself smiling and laughing more often.

And finally, finally, I was at peace with myself. I did research on feminism and equality to become educated on the things that had made me think the way I did. I decided that I wanted a change in feminine culture. Instead of tearing ourselves and others down, why couldn’t we build each other up? I made it a goal for me to compliment two of my friends and one person I didn’t know well every day. It made me happy to see another person’s face light up with just a simple “I love what you did with your hair today!” or “your makeup looks amazing!” 

Even with all of these changes, people still criticized me. One of my closest friends asked me why, if I was so interested in building women up, I still wore makeup, which made me think. Why did I wear makeup? It had been a no-brainer for me every single day since the beginning of seventh grade, so couldn’t it be tied to my self-hatred? 

So I did more research. I found hundreds of girls wondering the same thing–why do we wear makeup even if we’re happy with how we look? But the thing about makeup is, I learned, it’s not something to wear to change how you look. I personally wear it because I’m passionate about makeup, but a lot of the girls I came across said they wore it to bring out their features or just to look amazing.

After this was added to my feminist repertoire, I was ready to attack anyone who came at a girl for wearing something “inappropriate,” for wearing “too much” makeup, or for thinking of herself positively. I educated myself about everything from rape culture to school dress codes and all the in-betweens, and I was happy with this.

In the span of three years, I went from a girl who was fine with how she looked, to a girl who took society’s restrictions to heart and faked self-hatred, to a girl who actually despised everything about herself, to a girl who was educated, happy, proud, and beautiful.


	2. Sadness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: breif mention of suicide. all around talking about sadness.

I don’t want to kill myself. I really don’t. I tell that to my friends and they don’t believe me, they tell me I’m so sad and annoyed and generally upset at the world, so of course I want to kill myself. No. Not me.

I am weak. If I hear two of my friends talking to each other in hushed voices when I’m around, I assume it’s about me. I overthink the smallest things, like if I’m confused about a test question I automatically assume that I failed all of the other questions on the test. I’m not very good at controlling my emotions, and I constantly fear social interaction in which I am at a genuine loss for words.

I am broken. Things have happened to me that have torn me in unthinkable ways. I am forced out of the closet countless times by my friends. Said friends talk about me behind my back, but they don’t hide it very well so I notice it anyways. Said friends also tear me down in front of my face without realizing it, playing it off as a joke. It’s not a joke.

I am moody. Not just the typical teen-angst type of moody that’s in every single novel, but the real mood swings (and not just when I’m on my period). I go from happy-go-lucky girl to zombified sad girl in about two seconds, and just when you think I’m about to settle into a panic attack, I’m back to slap-happy sweetheart. 

I am lifeless. I often feel like I’m just a corpse, going through the motions. Sometimes I’ll zone out and when I come back to reality I have forgotten I am human. I walk the halls accompanied by nothing but empty space, and I feel as weightless and feelingless as the space I’m surrounded by.

I am all of these things. But I care about myself. I do not despise my every action, my face, my life, myself. I enjoy the little things, like music and theater and learning. I enjoy these things so much that it blinds me from all of the horrible things going on around me. 

So no, I don’t want to kill myself. I quite like it here on earth, with all the empty space, thank you very much.


End file.
